Thursday, May 15, 2008
Personal video recorders already have Hollywood running scared. Now Microsoft is pushing a new computer that will make trading TV shows as easy as using ... Napster.
Dec 9, 2002 | "Like Mr. Ed," says Craig Newmark, "I never speak until I have something to say." It's a crisp fall morning in San Francisco, and Newmark, sipping coffee at his neighborhood cafe, is in the middle of a long discussion of the ethics involved in watching television. He's invoked TV's talking horse to explain his fight with TV's fat cats: He's suing the media companies whose executives have been calling people like him -- people who use personal video recorders, or PVRs, such as TiVo and ReplayTV -- "thieves."
But Newmark, the founder of Craig's List, one of the most popular community sites on the Web, wants to talk about more than just television. He prefers to focus on "fairness," a concept that is dear to him, and that he says ought to be at the heart of not only TV but the distribution of all art. Having been indirectly accused by entertainment industry executives and attorneys of "copyright infringement" simply for using his beloved ReplayTV, Newmark has had reason, unlike many Americans, to think about whether the way he watches TV is "fair."
Is he being unfair if he sets his ReplayTV to record an episode of "The West Wing," one of his favorite shows, so he can watch it later? Is Newmark "stealing" from David Letterman -- "my TV pal" -- if he sets his Replay to skip the ads on "The Late Show"? And are artists really going hungry, and is Newmark really killing an industry, if, once in a while, he transfers some of the shows he records on his ReplayTV to his notebook computer, so he can watch TV while he's traveling?
It didn't take Newmark long to conclude that much of what he does with his TV is fair -- his actions are, he thinks, "fair use" exceptions to copyright laws and therefore legal. He insists that he's being equitable, not seeking to hurt artists just so he can have things his way. "When I record programs," he says, "I'm thinking about two things. First, I want studios to make a living at this. I have friends who are artists, writers and filmmakers, and I don't want them to get screwed. I try to be a good guy whenever I can. I use common sense."
And that's precisely why he joined four other ReplayTV owners in a suit against more than two dozen TV and movie companies. Newmark wants a judge to declare, as clearly as possible, that as long as you're using common sense, there's nothing wrong with using a PVR. (In August, Newmark's case was "consolidated" with a suit the media companies filed against ReplayTV maker Sonicblue; that case, which is in the pretrial phase, is slowly grinding through federal court.)
During his musings on the ethics of television, though, there was one thing that Newmark decided not to do with his ReplayTV, even though, technically, there's nothing stopping him. His ReplayTV is the only stand-alone PVR on the market that can transfer shows over the Internet, but "I just don't think that's fair," Newmark says. Sending a program recorded on one device -- whether a network show broadcast for free, or, more troubling for studios, a premium show like "The Sopranos" -- to another device, in much the same way that people routinely do with music these days, "just feels wrong."
Right now, Newmark's objection is almost moot. Entertainment lawyers have suggested that ReplayTV's Send Show feature will be the ruin of the networks, but according to people familiar with the system, only a relative handful of ReplayTV owners ever send shows, because it's a hassle to do so. It takes tech savvy to hook up a ReplayTV to a home network, and -- in contrast to the glory days of Napster -- it takes time and effort to find people to trade with.
But thanks to Microsoft, the TV-show trade may now be poised to explode. In October, the company unveiled Windows XP Media Center Edition, a new version of its Windows operating system that is installed in only a handful of "media" PCs being manufactured by a half-dozen computer makers. XP Media Center is billed as an all-in-one home entertainment system. The PCs come with CD and DVD writers and lots of disk space and processor power, and the operating system has a large-format interface and remote control functionality to control all media applications. The system also has PVR capabilities; just as with TiVo and ReplayTV, users can select a lineup of television shows to record and watch later.
There's one big difference between the Windows PVR and stand-alone devices like ReplayTV: On a PC, you can do a lot more of the things Hollywood hates. Microsoft's PVR software records TV shows into a format that will soon be playable virtually anywhere. The company's new desktop Windows Media Player will be able to play all Media Center's TV files, and Microsoft says it will make available the codes to let other companies' players -- such as RealNetworks', for example -- play the shows as well. Recorded TV shows may also be stored on DVDs and played back on any consumer DVD player. Media Center owners will thus be able to send shows to people who don't have Media Center PCs, using either physical media or the Internet -- a prospect that's got to have the Hollywood executives seeing red.
Microsoft has inserted some content-protection methods into the Media Center, but very few -- or, perhaps, none -- of today's TV shows are broadcast in such a way as to render them protected. This means that at least for the foreseeable future, everything consumers record on XP Media Center will be tradable. Since it takes at least 600 MBs of hard drive space to store a half-hour show, it's unlikely the trade will be as widespread as that of MP3s. But many analysts have noted that college students, who sparked the music trade, are a major target audience for Microsoft's Media Center PCs. College kids have time on their hands, broadband connectivity at their fingertips, and an abiding, cult interest in certain TV shows -- "The Simpsons," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Seinfeld" -- that borders on the obsessive. And if their willingness to trade music is an indication, the students may not share Newmark's ethical unease with swapping TV shows -- indeed, trading TV, which is supposed to be free, would seem easier to justify. All of which add up to this: The possible "Napsterization" of TV is at hand.
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